Saturday, December 14, 2013

The Debit Card Saga

After waiting for over two weeks for our official debit card to arrive, Elder Jones from the Mission Office gave it to us last Monday [December 2] but were told we wouldn't have funds in it until the next Friday [December 7th.] We walked to Soriano on Monday [December 9th] with full confidence that we could withdraw some pesos from our new debit card. We went to the ATM with Paul at the machine and Sherryl casually looking around to see if anyone was watching us. We were told to do this in our MTC security training. Trouble is, our card didn’t work. Paul tried it for checking and savings and credit and it didn’t work and said we had zero funds in it. So we had a problem. What to do? We walked a few blocks and across a busy street to the mission office to ask why we had zero funds only to find the mission office door locked. Now what? So we decided to walk the blocks back to Soriano so we could use our own Visa card to get out some cash like we did two weeks before. So back at the ATM, Paul inserted our own Deseret First Credit Union Visa and waaalaaaa---nothing happened. The ATM said that it was a “hot” card which we interpreted as stolen or has problems. <sigh> So we counted what we had on hand and bought a few groceries before we walked home.

Paul tried to call our Deseret First C.U. to inquire about our Visa. Trouble is that the internet wasn’t working well that day so the phone wasn’t working well either. He used a few of our 100 free minutes on our local line to call them and we were told that our card had been considered “hot” because of $450 pulled out of the cash machine in Tampico, Mexico about three weeks ago. Paul said that was a “legitimate” transaction and would happen about once a month but nothing else should have come out of the account since then and it hadn’t. So they lifted the ban on that card and said it would be ready to use in about 5 minutes. Paul called the Mission Office to talk to Elder Jones about our money. Elder Jones said the internet wasn’t working well today so he couldn’t check on our account right then but would call us back—but he didn't.

On Tuesday, during our break at the temple, Paul and I walked to the mission office to see Elder Jones and he was there. We asked about money in our account and he checked and we have none. He began to write to someone to ask about the money when he remembered something and realized he had made a mistake. He can’t request more than 6000 pesos and we are to get 8000 pesos and he should have done it in two batches of 4000 but didn’t and the first request was denied. He apologized and requested our money again in two smaller amounts and we would have to wait again until Friday to get it. We though we would be ok because our Deseret First account should work. So again, we walked across the busy street and over to Soriana where Paul got out 6000 pesos out of our personal Visa account and Sherryl guarded his back. Finally, on Friday, December 14, one month after our arrival in Mexico, we once again went to the ATM and our debit card now works!

View of the Soriano Mall from the ATM.

Like the scriptures say, "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things." [2 Nephi 2:11]